A Low Cost Kiosk for Student Learning of Human Machine Interface (HMI)

The use of touch sensing devices is common in this day and age. Capacitive touch sensing is the most widely used, but there are resistive and reflective means as well. Low cost, simple circuitry, easy to implement and simple to program were the four factors considered for classroom use. A means of implementing the touch sensing in an application was another factor. The result was a kiosk to be assembled and programmed by Electrical Engineering Technology students. This kiosk is based on the P8X32A because it offers VGA video, playing WAV files, touch sensing, patron detection and control interfacing. The P8X32A is an octal core microcontroller that allows for eight separate programs to run simultaneously. There is no sharing of time on a single CPU as is the case with Real Time Operating System (RTOS). The touch sensing combined with the VGA and WAV player outputs makes for a more intuitive user experience. This paper outlines hardware and software used for this human machine interface (HMI) project.